Seven reasons you should not say F*ck It and move to a mountain town

The Olympics isn’t just sharing articles about how many condoms get used in the Village (like world-class athletes bother with condoms — pfft) or how many Heinekens get crushed by the curlers before competition. It’s not about short-sheeting Bob Costas’s bed and farting on his pillow (sorry ’bout the Pink Eye, Bob) and it definitely isn’t about Johnny Weir’s wardrobe or Ashley Wagner doing her best Bachelorette stink face when the judges reveal her scores.

The Olympics is about aspirational living.

Because somewhere in there, between your third glass of Syrah and biting into a Chicken McNugget like it’s a gold medal, the idea comes to you. It’s the same instant message in your mind that pops in just after midnight on a coworker-drinks Friday when you declare you want to open a craft brewery brewing with only locally sourced hops and barley “also from somewhere close” and you’ll do a sweet Pilsner because double-IPAs are so 2013.

It’s the same seed planted the last day of vacation in Hawaii when you decide you’re going to text Maui Kimo, the guy who helped drive you around in the catamaran, and say you’ll help him get the funding he needs to start his own surfboard shaping company — you’ll even call it Maui Kimo & Friends designs because you’re that friend with seed money.

It’s the quirky post-dinner/post-bottle-and-a-third-of-wine-digression-with-your-longterm-significant-other about how you could maybe take that old, neat brick dry cleaner building and clean out the toxins and jackhammer out the back parking lot and use that area to grow an urban hipster victory-slash-beer garden, raise pygmy goats and little lambs and herd them all with a mini Aussie and not build a chicken coop because that’s so 2012; instead keep quail for their eggs to put in custom cocktails. You’ll grow your pack of tiny pink curly-tailed Wilburs and use them to cure your own Charcuterie. You’ll build a still and open a tiny-co-op-specialty-drink-and-passed-plates hang where the chalkboard menu won’t change daily because that’s so 2011.

…Or, you’ll just say fuck it, all that’s too much work, “I’m just going to move to a mountain town.”

1) You will not find a job: There are no jobs in mountain towns. No jobs. None. There are no jobs. And the jobs that are there are either jobs you can’t do: Ever attempted to groom in a blizzard at 3 a.m. when you’re still half buzzed from the night before — the night before = 20 minutes prior to getting behind the wheel? It’s a skill set that would make Chuck Yeager wet his flight suit; or jobs you don’t want to do: Ever get up at 4 a.m. to make the lowest possible salary the state will allow to pick up the dog shit of dogs who belong to the same person you once used to be? It’s a kind of excremental existentialism.

There’s this sort of pervasive common knowledge from folks who DO NOT live in a mountain town that the steps to moving to a mountain town and making it work are as such:

a) Quitting your job in a flurry of emails and snarky texts. b) Selling your car and giving away most of everything else you accumulated from Etsy/eBay/Amazon/O.co over the last half decade as workimpulsebuys on Craigslist. c) Buying a used Tacoma for $2,500 over KBB. d) Finding a sick chalet, like the one your co-worker had on ski lease three seasons ago when it didn’t really snow but was fun to go party at and play late-night drinking strip Jenga with a 24-year-old marketing girl and go get in the hot tub even though for some reason it never got above, like, 80. And e) Just get a job as a bartender.

This is where the record needle scratches.

“Just get a job as a bartender” in a mountain town is the idea equivalent of moving to New York and “just becoming a VP at Goldman Sachs” or renting a studio in Silver Lake and “just getting your sitcom picked up by Netflix” or crossing over to Hawaii and “just surfing Pipeline.”

Bartending jobs are the Skull and Keys secret societies of mountain communities, often passed down through generations upon generations of bro inbreeding.

Even a shitty barbacking gig can take eight to 10 years to come by and usually only happens if the current barback happens to freeze like Jack in the final frame of The Shining trying to dig out his ‘93 Supra to get to work and you, luckily, are just then walking by with your mini Aussie who was supposed to be herding urban ewes en route to your actual job which is working the gas station Subway counter for families whose kids “couldn’t wait to get to the cabin to eat because the mountains make them hungry” off the 80.

In other words, you will not find a job.

2) You will be cold: We get that you get that it’s cold in the mountains. Something about how it needs to be cold outside for the sky to make snow. But did you know a place like Truckee, CA, which looks woodsy and rustic but with shiny concrete floors and a throw-back round hot tub and staged vintage cocktail shakers with snow as ice and a nice small-tile backsplash for every kitchen to toast your good mountain town fortune in copper Moscow Mule cups, is actually the coldest place in the US?

It is. And you know why? Because it’s fucking cold there. And it’s not just cold in a dead-of-night-before-a-powder-day-a-couple-weeks-a-year way or a “well, I’ll just stop at the Patagucci outlet in Reno and stock up on discounted $83 baselayers” way.

The latter cold weather event results in getting two guys in appropriately workstained and worn threadbare Carhartts to come over. Their mountain town job is to lurk around a crawl space and fish out rodents whose pelts you’d now gladly wear as a coat after getting your last heating bill. They charge you something in the neighborhood of $973 to get the vents cleaned so when the heat does happen to turn on, it doesn’t blow dead-animal smell like an exhaust pipe during the dinner party you host that nobody comes to because they couldn’t shovel out of their driveway.

So now you’re not only cold you’re…

3) Broke. See: Reason one, but now take that $18k savings you managed to not fritter on Banana Republic flash sales and small plates dinners with gigantic checks, and, well, spend it all.

A crash course on how to spend $20k on simple mountain town living in less than 90 days:

Month one: $8,700. First and last month’s rent plus deposit. The deposit will be somewhere in the $1,800-$2,700 range and you will never get it back. Nobody in the history of a mountain town has ever gotten his rent deposit back. Do you like small-claims court? Good. Move to a mountain town. General set up including replacing some of the furniture you just got rid of and trading in the Honda Fit for aforementioned well-above-market-price Tacoma or ‘07 Outback with only 167,000 miles.

Month three: $4,300. There are certain unavoidable start-up costs to being accepted in a mountain town. Saki bombs and all-you-can-eat sushi on you by way of introduction. Still schlepping six packs of $9.99 craft pale ale over to your new bro’s house every time you go visit, like, because, you have the money, right bro? General mountain town first-time rip-offs, like paying $850 for a delivered/not stacked cord of “cedar” or that first-through-third time at your new/local friendly mechanic, “looks like the alternator, maybe” and one week later returning it because the heater and defroster mysteriously stopped working; your new/used car never broke so much. Then, of course, since you’re there but still not from there, you’re still buying stuff you’ll eventually get for free like ski passes and Jagarbombs and plow service.

4) You will not get laid: This is kind of a big one because everything else just kind of disappears when you’re getting some, especially in a mountain town. Nothing is as good as being at a bar when all the people you used to work with from the city pile in on a steamy February three-day-weekend evening and are trying to hit on the girl with the windburned face and the lips that have been blanched three shades whiter than the cheeks of her bum and you — yes you — the guy with the house that smells of dead vermin. The guy with like three of those ramen packs of spices spilled on his counter and eggs from the first Obama administration in the fridge. The guy who has no matching socks to speak of, is taking her home.

This small victory is only momentary. And, because mountain towns are the self-fulfilling-prophecy-where-every-cliché-is-actually-true capitols of the world, the adage that “she’s not yours, it’s just your turn” is a reality you will face almost with the same frequency as pulling up to the gas station, late for your morning shift, knowing there are fewer dollars in your bank account than there are degrees on the thermometer and holding your breath hoping the gas pump doesn’t demand those three dreaded words: “Please see attendant.”

Oh, and if you’re a woman, ignore this. You will get laid — too much. This brings an entirely different set of problems …which you well know.

5) You’re not needed up there. You’re needed down here: You know the feeling you get at work when you’re watching a ski porn trailer and one of your direct reports creeps up behind you and you can’t hear a damn thing because some brotastic bro is just hucking the biggest line ever probably in Haines because everything you’ve ever seen that’s cool happens in Haines and you’re wondering if that’s a Wolf Parade song or maybe it’s TV on the Radio or maybe it’s neither because it’s Passion Pit (it’s always Passion Pit) …but you’re just completely in the zone and the pesky charge taps you on the shoulder and tells you something’s wrong with whomever’s XML and you could give two shits short of a fuck and then they say something like, “Skiing, huh? Do people still ski or is it all snowboarding now? My nephew snowboards.” Even though they’re just trying to be nice, you just want to be like “I am among you but not OF you and a mountain town is my destiny …bro” and you realize, at that moment, you do NOTHING.

Like nothing’s getting done, ever and then you go get drinks and talk about nothing and then you go to CrossFit and nothing happens and wouldn’t it be a better workout just to shovel snow and open cans of beans and put your own snow tires on your car and run around the woods for seven hours trying to find your missing mini Aussie because isn’t that at least something?

Well, yes.

But the problem is, you’re down there so you can come up one weekend a year and spend your money and perpetuate that dream for one. More. Season. Because you doing nothing means a whole lot to the mountain town’s economy which you would actually be taking away from should you move there. Why? Because if everyone stopped doing nothing and instead moved to a mountain town, even fewer people would have something to do in the mountain town.

If enough of you decide to move, then it all goes away.

6) You will miss lots of things: Ready? Book signings. Concerts (especially the ones that go too late on a Tuesday with the opener that’s better than the headliner that nobody’s heard of yet and when they come into town in another eight months as a headliner you can tell everyone you saw them when they were the opener and downloaded their music that night). Restaurants that serve something besides wings and Coors Light pitchers. Girls. Conversations about current events that don’t include the extended forecast. The at least tacit acknowledgement of your advanced degree. Wearing clothes that aren’t stuffed with feathers. Flip flop weather. Having more than one friend (and then dealing with missing that one friend when he breaks his wrist and decides to move out of the mountain town.) Those random parties when you walk in and start a conversation with someone about something you thought nobody else read in the New Yorker and how you’d wished you’d written it. Finding someone at a random party who doesn’t think your reference to the New Yorker is about your roommate from the East Coast. Houses that don’t smell like bong water and drying-out socks (yes, that’s every house in a mountain town). Dry towels. For some reason, towels never seem to get fully dry in a mountain town. They’re either kind of wet, or frozen stiff. Cars that start. Girl/guy ratio better than 1/9. Public transit.

Plus, as lead in to number seven, there’s this strange thing that happens with your “city” friends, they all sort of decide to grow up and marry and ask for that raise and have children and you’ll go down and check on them and you’ll actually feel (and maybe look) the same age as when you left but you realize, looking at them that…

7) …The years just disappear: Mountain towns are four-season time sucks. After awhile it’s not days or weeks or even months or years on a calendar page that matter, it’s snow and it’s summer and then it’s the time when you don’t work and all your mountain town friends go to Mexico for a month and come back and talk about how everything was like $3 a day. Then it’s snow again. And suddenly, your hands are old-looking and cracked and your hair’s sort of super long and stringy and there’s grays sprouting on your chin and you can’t remember the last time you slept in and your shoes are treadless and duct tape is your new best friend and everything around you just kind of happens or doesn’t.

And you find your old resumé on the desktop of your old computer that you haven’t turned on in three seasons and you think about the people you used to work with and the concerts you missed and the shopping you didn’t do and all the stuff you used to have that’s floating around someone else’s apartment and you realize, all of it — including time — just kind of evaporates.

Then one day, in line at the store, usually in December, you catch the glance of the guy in front of you buying sugar-free Redbull and Goldschlager. He turns around and looks, half sort of scared/half curious, and asks you if you had a good day.

You say “No” but nod yes and garnish it with a cocksure half grin.

And for the rest of his vacation he thinks: That guy knows something …maybe I should say fuck it and move here.

Truckee is a tropical paradise compared to West Yellowstone Montana, I know Truckee is often the coldest locale in the lower 48 in the summer, but you will experience a new dimension of pain and suffering if you ever spend a winter in West Yellowstone…

This article is horrible! I hope this is satirical, like the girl who wrote about how she was better than every possible boyfriend because she travels? I am so over living in a mountain town & everything whined about in here is to be expected. It’s cold!? “Duh, yah, were in the Rockies” and who goes to book signings? Truckee has never hit a record cold the United states and this season isn’t even getting snow 😉 I’m over this mountain town, but for reasons like: I want to grow up? All this bitching is pathetic & this guy has never made it in a mountain town (if not satirical – let’s pray it is)

They have no dress code whatsoever. We have to decide what to wear to work all on our own. It was so easy back in London; suit, shirt, tie done. Oh I miss the ironing.

And let me tell you about the commute – there is no subway. Forget about reading the Daily Telegraph as you are transported underground for an hour to your destination. Oh no, I have to do battle in my car for sometimes up to 3 minutes. Think about it, 6 mins a day wasted driving too and from work. That’s 30 mins a week I could be doing something more productive. And the gas. You do the math – 1 mile a day for 20 days a month. That’s a gallon of gas or $3.99 each month just to get to and from work.

I could go on; there are dogs everywhere as you can bring your ‘best friend’ to work. When it snows we have to go skiing at lunch time. They give us ‘wellness money’ every year to buy new toys. Like I said, I could go on.

2) You will be cold:
Oh totally agree! I don’t know what we would do if we didn’t have gas/electricity/wood/thermal clothing to keep us warm – it would be a complete nightmare.

If it was cold all the time that would be one thing but it’s not. It’s hot in the Summer – it totally throws you for a loop. You need different clothes, different toys…it’s a real pain.

3) Broke.
Oh totally agree! First and last month’s rent plus deposit is such a mountain town scam. Back in London a landlord would just hand over the keys to your new apartment so long as you assured them that you were going to pay the rent each month and not trash the place.

And don’t get me started on paying for gear. If you thought the stores were going to give it to you for free like they do in the cities, forget it. If you need sporting equipment you’re going to have to pay for it. We do have the Goldmine thrift store but it’s full of designer labels and most of the stuff has hardly been used, so you know there must be something wrong with it.

4) You will not get laid:
Oh totally agree! And I see no contradiction with ‘You will not get laid’ juxtaposed with ‘She’s not yours, it’s just your turn’ – it makes perfect sense.
Yeah the moral compass of mountain town folk is completely haywire. Throw out all your big city naivety. While cheating and sleeping around might not happen at sea level, all bets are off once you hit 6,000ft.

In fact a mile is 5,280 ft which means everyone from Bellevue to Ketchum are part of some kind of promiscuous, thrill seeking, mile high club.

With everything taking care of itself you would think people would have plenty of time to do something instead of nothing. But with the exception of the skiers, boarders, cyclists, anglers, paragliders, skaters, hunters, hikers and kayakers, we’re a pretty inert bunch here.

6) You will miss lots of things:
Oh totally agree! 15+ galleries, 30+ restaurants and bars, 2 movie theaters it’s a wonder we don’t go insane. Kinda feels like that town in Footloose where music is banned. If it wasn’t for the Jazz festival, Marley in the Mountains, the Symphony, Ketchum Alive, MASSV, bands at Whiskeys, Company of Fools, The Nexstage Theater, Sun Valley Writer’s Conference, The Wellness festival, Fourth of July parade, Trailing of the sheep, the USA Cycling National Championships, the Ice Shows, the Ketchum Arts Festival, I don’t know what we would do, really I don’t.

7) …The years just disappear:
Oh totally agree! That old adage ‘time flies when you’re having fun’ is absurd. Give me London dreary gloom 365 so that the passage of time has no punctuation and you can pretend it will go on being gloomy forever.

So there you have it. Seven well reasoned deterrents for you not to move here. Don’t make the same mistake we did. It is too late for us, but you can save yourself. If conditions improve here I promise I will let you know. For now though, best just to limit yourself to one, maybe two visits a year. After all, paradise is not for everyone.

Go do a season with some real friends. Then come back and write your shitty article. At least then it will contain some sort of twisted truth, A season is what you make of it. And you obviously made moronic friends.

You know, that might be the way it is now….and of course it IS that way because guys like ME started ALL the things that this article says does not happen in Mountain towns. At least not any more because now EVERYBODY tries to pull this move. I had the very good sense to move to Bend, Oregon in 1985. Before Bend was BEND. When it was a cool mountain town. Where I had not one but three jobs at the same time. Could have had more if there would have been more hours in the day. When beer was cheap because there was an EPIC locals only bar called Trappers since leveled for “progress” so they could put the Parkway in. Where the girls were more than just friendly and accommodating. Where banging in the trees east of Rainbow on a sunny spring day took on a whole new meaning. Then there were the wild weekends in Sunriver with willing females from Portland, Seattle, and San Francisco who WOULD do every damn thing you could think of, and I could think of a lot! Yes, ALL these things that this article says do not exist used to exist in abundance in mountain towns. The problem was, too many guys like me went and lived this dream and some of those stupid morons actually wrote about it or turned it into movies and then the rush was on. Assholes!! They screwed it all up for the rest of you. And by the way….yes, it is colder than an Eskimo’s weiner in Bend in the winter. You WILL burn up a whole forest’s worth of juniper, lodgepole pine, the neighbor’s wooden patio furniture, that particle board desk you bought at the rummage sale, and basically anything else you can to stay warm. You have not lived until you get hypothermic sleeping in your own bed.

This is hilarious… Yes please don’t move to a mountain town… we don’t want negative people around. Life is good and i’m not stuck in 3 hours of commuting traffic a day breathing in fumes from cars of every pissed off person in the city… Oh and that bit about missing out on shopping??!! really?
Reading this made my day, so thanks

Or you could just get a remote Job in the tech industry, import a girlfriend and build a cabin 5 miles outside of town. Sorry, whats that I missed? Shopping? Oh yea, actually enjoying my life, clean air, peace and quite, and the amazing landscapes and I enjoy for free.

In summery, yea don’t move to a Mountain town. We don’t want you here.

Awesome piece except for “the 80” (it’s “80” or “I-80,” just like “I-5” is “the 5” south of Fresno or so), and the fact that Truckee isn’t actually that cold compared to the Northern Rockies and elsewhere. The summer average brings it down, but there’s a reason Tahoe is famous for Sierra Cement, Juneuary, and t-shirt skiing.

While you are somewhat correct about all those things. This is for the most part true of unsuccessful, lazy, rich kids who’s parents suddenly get a clue and cut them off. Sounds like you speak from experience but I wouldn’t trade my mountain town life for anything. I think most people reading this will agree with me when I say you should keep your negative bullshit to yourself.

Finding a Job is actually much easier because of the seasonal nature of a mountain town AND that there is a smaller pool of candidates for a position. In my experience finding one in Denver or front range College towns is MUCH more difficult.

Finding a job is actually much easier in a mountain town. Less candidates for any given position and seasonal workers. In my experience, finding one in Denver or front range College towns is MUCH more difficult.

Please keep telling people it is like this because the less morons like you that are out here the more peaceful it will be, Christ this guy has his head so far up his ass it would take search and rescue to find it roflmfao!

Wow, you just gave me a number of reasons to quit my mountain town job and move to Denver, where it’s all unicorns and rainbows.

Forget the fact that there are more IT workers living and working from the ski lifts than I care to count (I’m guilty of having meetings from the gondola and just riding it around – definitely get some strange looks though).

I would much rather spend my days in strip malls and fast food rather than doing something I love though.

For those that read this article, I honestly can’t tell if this guy/gal is a total idiot or just driving traffic to their site, but the number one problem that causes people to hate the mountains IS they don’t have a plan. No place to sleep, no job to go to, no pass etc… Do your homework before you show up and you might not end up sleeping on the roach motels pool table. When you do that get a job and save some money rather than buying everyone sake, and you know – pay your rent before the 1st of the month so you don’t have to cry to your landlord when the snow gets thin. Firewood? wow, 800 bucks a pop – I paid about $20 for my license and borrowed a chainsaw – then I spent a couple of afternoons chopping up. Entire electric bill is about $150 in the winter.

Ultimately I feel bad that you had a shitty experience, but honestly, you kind-of sound like an idiot. Mountain living is not hard, but people make it that way and seem to forget that all that stuff they get away with in the big city is amplified. If you take care of your responsibilities first instead of acting like an 18 y/o at his first weekend of college you might not have such a hard time.

[…] recently read a very entertaining blog post entitled “Seven Reasons Why You Should Never Say F*ck It and move to a mountain town”. It really made me laugh and I would highly recommend it. Mostly the post appealed to me because […]

[…] lease expire (granted, letting leases expire in a mountain town is basically a rite of passage—but that’s a different column) was either busy that day grinding on too much mango salsa at Chubasco, there was a sale on the […]

For some odd reason, this article posted up on my feed. Reading this article was worst than receiving a call from my former university asking for money. I bet the author wrote this article while sitting in the 4 Seasons getting his nails done on a “ski trip” to Jackson Hole.

That is Crested Butte to a tee. The writer seems really long winded, and negative. Life is what you make it. Chicks are sluts in a ski town. The problem is, when you grow up, you find that fact less than awesome. Its almost impossible to find a well rounded woman in a ski town. The guys say: You dont lose your girl, only your turn, GNARLY. The girls say: The odds are good, but the goods are odd. Serves ya right for dating that douchbag anyway! and yes, most ski bums have rich parents and are strung out on pills, worthless. You can find a job but, most of the time, but not all the time, you have two to three months every spring and fall, w no work. Thats what sucks for me. You ethier love it and hang, or ya cant do it and only last a season or two. Good luck!

I lived in a mountain town for six years and like to add:
1. You’ll spend all your work time catering to rich assholes who think they’re better than you.
2. Your friends will try to become real estate agents at some point (so they can become rich assholes after one sale).
3. Residents begin traveling in small clicks after awhile and pretending not know other residents of the same small town.
4. You’ll be aggressively asked, “how long you’ve lived there?,” on every lift, gondola ride and bar stool every day that you live in said town.

Whoever you are mr. writer you sound very bitter. So you lived in a mountain town and did not like it. Fare enough. Yes you spend all you time broke, rent is expensive, gear is too, your job is generally not your dream job and being in a relationship can sometime be like finding a unicorn. But if you were to just stop for a second and look at where you are you might love it. You make friends that are unlike others, you can work as well as play outside, you spend money on gear because gear is a means to fun and time gets away from you because you are too busy living and rather then watching the clock. If a mountain town is not for you then fine. Leave. Don’t complain about it. There are more then enough people who will take your place. Life is not perfect and its what you make of it. Head back to the city if thats what you need. Just stop hating on what other love.

As a free lancer who occasionally is asked to do satirical travel pieces, and I can say this out loud: this is the worst article I have ever read in 23 years in the industry. Bad cliches, run on sentences applied poorly (and I am a huge fan of 18th centuryesque run ons), and vague 1st hand reflections of experiences with no substance. Who the hell is this guy? This article is proof that we should all go running back to traditional media.

Truckee actually is the coldest place in the lower 48. But it is on an annual basis. So while it is very cold in th winter, it is not the coldest. But in July it can be freezing in the morning and 85 later that day. I lived there and did the snowboarding thing in the early 90’s and my family has been there since the 1800’s. Much of this is true and likely more so today, but then we had plenty of fun, worked construction, lift ops, friends tended bar and we had female company, although that was tough then too. Winter 91-92 was epic. Powder for days.

Spot on and of course it is supposed to be humorous…I love the fact that people throw rebuttals out about this article..Who cares if it has run on sentences and is punctuated incorrectly. It may not be the mountain town of today because so many are no longer “mountain towns” but extensions of our cities. yes you can now do iT work from the gondola but that is not how it was in the late 80’s -90’s. The generality of this article is accurate and being a ski-bum was a lifestyle. I have no doubt the author of this had the time of his/her life while in whatever ski-town they lived in as did all of us who have responded to this. It was or still may be a time in our lives we will never forget and even if you can only relate to half of the true-isms that are spoken about then you know you where in one of these towns. You may have never got up at crack of dawn and walked to vistabahn lift in the frozen wonderland of vail to scrape chairs in the morning and then ride 20 min to the back bowls to start a snow blower to move 30″ of snow to open. You may have never had to drive to a-basin at 11pm while the party was just starting to start your grooming shift till 7 so people could get to the east wall or get to that one coffeshop that opened up extra early for all the seasonal employees to get their coffee on the way to whatever mountain job they had after spending the whole night partying in under-subsidized employee housing (run on sentence). I submit, that any of us that lived and did or still do any of these things did them because it was a lifestyle choice and a wonderful free choice at that. If you were like me who after college did not want to go straight into the workforce ski-towns were a great choice and some of the best times of my life….

what an asshole. you are obviously one of those work scrubs whpo come in and work for pennied for a corporate ski area. how many years did you live up high? your little vacation for a couple of years before you succumbed to your parents desires to enter the exciting world of accounting is typical of this attitude. make it in a mountain town? it takes some brass and effort that you obviously dont have. this is a way of life up here, our children are born here and grow up in an amazingly safe and positive environment. we love it here. how dare you put down manual laborers who come to fix your heat in the winter. i am going to guess that you are a millennial and you think you have it all figured out. you know what junior? we dont want your types up here. maybe thats why you didnt make it, because you exude the attitude of a spoiled clueless little shit. have fum in traffic on your commute, it snowed here so im up t he lifets for a few deep runs before i pick up my kid and go to a sledding party. your life is bullshit.

you really touched a nerve with this one AJP. Why didn’t you tell me you were a lazy millennial asshole that couldn’t hack it in a mountain town. You used to be somebody, with your 18th century run on sentences, catering to rich assholes, and living it up in the 4 Seasons. And what about $2 Biltmore Breakfasts, Pall Malls, & The Cutthroat? I’m with the rest of the losers commenting on your inane post…when your sad your sad.

This would be a lot funnier if this writer could figure out how to write clear sentences. You don’t have to fit every humorous thought in your jaded little head. Just pick the choicest ones. I stopped reading after a few paragraphs because it’s just too tiring trying to figure out your self-satisfied, incomprehensible shitstorm wittiness. I know you’d like to be Hunter S T, but you’re not.

Hilarious and might apply to more folks who tried and failed…if they were dropped on their heads as infants…a lot.

But let’s push the salad aside and get to the meat of this rant. It might as well be titled “Seven reasons you should not say F_ck it and eat chocolate cake”. Anyone who spends at least 3-4 days outside of a tightly closed box of rocks knows that most people love a good slice of chocolate cake now and then, I know I do. And when you have the be-all end-all of chocolate cakes in front of you, do post 7 reasons why everyone should come over and scarf it down? Hell No! You want it all to your self, don’t want to share.

So while anyone who is not a Trustafarian and has lived in a mountain town has experienced at least one or more of these “Seven Self Induced Sins”….we tend to not like the idea of a traffic jam on the 405 in So Cal being diverted to a glorious mountain town in the name of “Sharing the Love”….drift caught yet? My 17 years in one of the best mountain towns in the world has been nothing short of life extending and breathtaking…like daily. It’s not been anything like what the author so hilariously if not verbosely expressed.

Sometimes I get asked it if is expensive to live where I do ( it is ) and I simply reply “No, it is priceless” ( because it is ). It might be that the author is trying to prevent every about-to-go-postal non-postal worker from moving to your little slice of paradise……

Hilarious! And from everyone I’ve talked to (and I do like to talk, esp in the hot tub), seems spot on.

I think I’ll stick to my “living vicariously” mantra which (besides no sleep, too much weed & alcohol, driving 10 hrs in snowstorms like it’s no big deal between mtns) includes the following:

> buying Dom in bars
> overpaying for everything with a smile on my face
> on the last day of every trip, throwing out (not proud) or donating enough food and consumables to feed a high school over the course of my ski vacation career
> on the last day of every trip, donating weed & paraphernalia going into the thousands over my ski career
> buying airline tix a day or even 2 hrs before ANY flight headed West takes off

And just about every other stupid financial thing one could do. In the long run, I realize I’m still way ahead and, after talking to ski bum buddies I’ve accumulated over the years, I’m getting more days “on the hill” than they are. . .how ironic.

We never asked you to come to our mountain town and we don’t need you back. You’re a kook! You believe in collecting material goods as a way of showing your “friends” that you’re successful. Enjoy continuing your life with the miserable masses and we’ll enjoy waking up to bluebird days and freedom. You are lame, people could smell it on you and nobody cares. You don’t understand the lifestyle and the town regurgitated you. Enjoy your New Yorker!

1. Truckee is a “Mountain Town” like San Francisco is a 24 Hour Metropolis. There are more places to eat in Reno at 4am than in Frisco. Reno is a half hour drive away from Truckee.

2. Sticking with your chosen exemplar… Craigslist lists 1800 job ads in Reno/Tahoe, 80 of them in Truckee. Truckee has 10% of the regional population, so that’s underperforming per capita, but what do you know…

3. Tahoe Mountain Beer Company is hiring a Taproom Beer-Tender right now.

4. There are more people on the internet who actual live in something resembling a mountain town than who describe people they work with as “direct reports.”

5. I hope one of them, somewhere, is writing the article I naively expected here, along the lines of, “Don’t try to avoid the enviropocalypse by moving to a Mountain Town, because the survival of global civilization depends on changing our urban population centers and sea level food systems, not (escapist fantasies of) abandoning them.” Or, “Mountain Towns have the exact same challenges as Big Cities — persistant poverty, violence, bigotry, and resource depletion, all in service of corporate profiteering and elitist wealth preservation — just different topological distribution.”

6. Or anything other than this fatuous drivel from a small minded dolt with no interest in addressing anyone who isn’t exactly as white, male, affluent, able-bodied, single, hetero, cis gendered, sexist, amoral, anti-intellectual, and loutish as he is. I sincerely hope you find your way to critical self awareness and civic interconnection, preferably through something like “I Heart Huckabees” and not “Changing Lanes.”

Very good article. I just moved from Breckenridge. A few points were off but for the most part the article was very true. I am a woman and first, jobs were very easy to find. That was the only part of the article I did not agree with. I had no problems finding work. Anyway, yes, men will not get laid and if a woman is willing to put out it is best to turn her down. She will be an STD ridden pool. You don’t want that. The food and cold is right on too. You actually should have gone into more detail about it. It is horrible. I moved to Denver where it is warmer. I love it in the city. I can actually eat! Please write more about mountain life and go into detail. Everything except the work (which isn’t good) is spot on.

A funny article with a lot of partial truths. The author is definitely experienced and knows his stuff. Actually a better than average writer to boot. Probably directed to larger mountain towns than where I live billed as the biggest skiing in america. Somewhere in the Rockies,you figure it out?

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